John Seitz

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Love loves to love love. The Bread, My Sweet is a cutesy romance set within an Italian-American family, has a cute old matriarch (Rosemary Prinz) dying of cancer, a mentally retarded savant (Shuler Hensley), and an MBA corporate raider (played by Scott Baio!) who rediscovers his heart and soul by devoting his attention to the family bakery. What's not to love? Bittersweet to the point of cloying, and sappy past the breaking point of saccharine, The Bread, My Sweet is altogether too much Hallmark Card and not enough lived-in ethnic authenticity in the courtship.

Domenic Pyzola (Baio) is a hatchet man in the business world of unchecked ambition. In his double life, he works for the family bakery helping out his brothers. His neighbor Bella (Prinz) has become a surrogate mom, and a shoulder for him to lean on. But he won't have her forever. That soap opera device of terminal cancer rears its ugly head, and to comfort her in these ailing months Domenic proposes a false marriage to Bella's daughter Lucca (Kristen Minter). This arrangement is meant to last only until Bella passes away, but love is unpredictable and complex. Lucca and Domenic find they have deeper feeling than this straightforward business arrangement, and love loves to love love indeed...

Uber-quirky but strangely satisfying Coen escapade, skewering the world of big business (at least as it existed in the 1950s), as a company schemes to drive the price of the stock down by installing an imbecile (Tim Robbins) as president. This isn't Fargo, not by a longshot, but it's not meant to be. This is one of those fun little flicks that really, really grows on you, featuring amazing performances by Robbins, Paul Newman, and Charles Durning, and even a memorable (if rote) appearance by Jennifer Jason Leigh. But what really sticks with you is the ultra-clever dialogue... "You know, for kids!"